City

I had only been in Taipei city for two hours - and half of that was spent in the airport claiming baggage and marveling at the shiny, brightly lit marble floors. From the airport, we loaded our suitcases and boxes into a friend's car and started the drive home, through the city. The city is a gorgeous place. Despite the cloudiness that is expected to stick around for the duration of my stay and the darkness of night, the streets and stores were lit up in a delicate kind of "look at me" gorgeousness (which is more than New York, or even Chicago can say. They say "feast in my glory.") This is home, even though I haven't been here for five years, and before that, I don't know how long. Conscious memory tells me I can only recall once, but memory is a fickle thing. We drive down the road between highways, and the highway, and then the streets lined with stores bedecked with neon signs. Leaving the airport area, the walls along the streets are lined with flashing red lights. In America, this only ever happens at Christmas time. We pass a river, along which are lines of streetlamps hovering over the sidewalks that run along the river. It reminds me of the lights on a bridge in Washington, D.C., one that I crossed along time ago to dine at a fantastic Lebanese restaurant, or else of The Bourne Supremacy, when Bourne gets shot in the shoulder in Berlin - no, he was in Moscow. There's an archway of circles that reminds me of downtown St. Louis. These roads with roads criss-crossing over each other that make me smile a little because in the darkness it reminds me of Wacker Street. The way that the cars turn in the road and the movement of the buses reminds me of Chicago's Michigan Avenue. I haven't even gotten to the big name stores yet, and Taipei has all the glory everywhere. Then at a busy intersection, there's a complex pedestrian bridge that crosses every which way a pedestrian would want to go. The huge contraption reminds me of a mall in Providence. Everywhere I look in the lively night, there are lit signs. It is unlike New York - less flamboyant and eye-searing - and the closest I can equate is Chinatown, but even that's not right. I look out at the road over which I am staying today, and the thick tree-lined medians set against high rise buildings seems so much like Central Park, set admist the big city. I can hear buses and that to me is the real sound of big cities, not taxis honking at each other. I remember seeing a forked street last night, with a building jutting out to split the roads. This reminds me simulatiously of Tainan and New York City. Two entirely different places. I am sitting at someone else's computer and there is literally a world between myself and the home I've been living in for the past years. This one city, seems like a mix of all the little things of cities all over that I have encountered. The roar, the movement, the ever present clouds even. Maybe it doesn't matter what city I just came from, Los Angeles or St. Louis or anywhere. I haven't been getting my cities mixed up - this is everywhere. Jessica can be immediately pegged as a "tourist" or "American" merely by the fact that her tshirt's sleeves end about a foot before her wrists. She is in Taiwan from March 13 to March 24 and welcomes non-creepy blogworthy readers in Taiwan to buy her copious amounts of delicious Taiwanese food while she's here.